Peter Monroe

Peter Monroe’s core principles of the Wilherst plan for the inner cities is as follows: 1) paradoxically, the most valuable physical assets in these areas are the once proud, now vacant and deteriorating homes: 2) the most important personal assets are those citizens who have jobs or other legal sources of income who have an enormous desire to move in and fix up these homes with help from skilled local contractors who wish to earn income by assisting in this housing “gold rush”; 3) the key source of cash to help owners with their “sweat equity” or “self-help” program are private sources of capital such as Wilherst;  4) local governments must help make this housing “gold rush” work by encouraging private enterprise to purchase and resell these houses by writing off bogus assets on their books that hide the depth of the financial demise of cities, such as old tax and utility liens, in favor of increasing capital available to new homeowners so that they can fix up their houses and produce real future tax and utility revenues; and 5) relaxing code requirements (other than those dealing strictly with health and safety) so that these new homeowners have the time and incentive to fix up their homes.